Developer Diaries

Worms: Open Warfare Developer Diary #4

Team17's game designer Kevin Carthew talks about the game's environments.

Throughout the series, the Worms games have been known for their wacky stage design. With Open Warfare, the option to tweak landscapes in each environment ensures that the same game isn't played twice. Designer Kevin Carthew details everything from safe points for combatting worms to the aesthetics behind each environment.

Do It Yourself Landscaping?

So far throughout these diaries, I've explained the mainstay features of the Worms series of games. All things Worms have made it into our latest title; the "random landscape generator" being such a feature, and part of what really makes the game what it is. This clever feature helps to ensure that no two games are ever necessarily the same, and it's capable of producing up to ten thousand million (not a joke!) different landscapes for the worms to trade blows upon.

Worms wouldn't be Worms without its crazy looking environments, and in Worms: Open Warfare they're back with a vengeance. The PSP version of the game features animated 3D backdrops, containing a host of incidental graphical effects that help to add to the atmosphere.

In Worms: Open Warfare, up to four players can duke it out in a variety of six different environments. (Fancy trading blows upon frozen arctic planes? How about kicking sand in each others faces on the beaches of Hawaii?)

Before battle begins, the player chooses what kind of landscape the action will take place upon. The six environments available for selection are "Jungle," "Arctic," "Hell," "Hawaii," "Space" and "London." Once the theme of the environment is decided, the next choice is to decide upon the type of landscape. Types of landscape include varying craggy islands and cavernous underground spaces. To a certain degree the type of landscape you choose will affect the course of the battle. Fighting on islands provides a fast-paced dangerous match, as the seas that lap at the shores mean death for your worms! Playing in a cavern generally means a more thoughtful and tactical game, as you'll find more nooks and crannies to safely sequester your worms in.

Of course, each and every landscape that you play upon is fully destructible. Every single inch of it can be blown up, deformed and destroyed. Fully destructible landscapes ensure that your worms are always kept on their toes (or tails perhaps) as the surroundings are always changing, constantly posing questions for the players. Do you attack the enemy directly, or perhaps try and destroy their defenses? One moment you may be safe from attack because of the surrounding land, two moves ahead and the land is gone and you must revise your plan of action.

The Various Landscapes

Each of the different environments offer their own set of objects, objects that provide cover for your worms. Let's take a quick glance at each of the environments, and the kind of things you might find in them...

The Arctic

Playing in the Arctic you will come across igloos, snowmen and crashed space capsules! The landscape is made up of snow and ice, and a small blizzard is blowing. In the background a ship can be seen slowly sinking after colliding with an iceberg. I wonder what that could be?

Wrap up warm, it¿s freezing out there!

The Jungle

In the rainforest you'll find shelter behind felled trees, wild plants and crashed light aircraft. You also might encounter the ominous constructions of the local tribesmen. A Mesopotamian-styled temple sits in the background, and flocks of birds cross the inky night skies.